Open wide and get ready to take a huge bite…
Our part of the night may not be a devourable book, strictly speaking – this brick of 800 pages is chewed slowly, one bite at a time – but one thing is certain: this novel by Argentine novelist and journalist Mariana Enriquez ( to whom we owe the collection of short stories What we lost in the fire) will not leave you hungry.
A veritable sprawling fresco, a fantastico-Gothic epic tinged with horror and occultism, this river novel (winner of the Roman-Nouvelles-Récit prize outside Quebec at the Prix des libraires 2022) is also an immersion in the social and political history of Argentina, in particular during the horrible period of the military dictatorship, at the end of the 1970s. We follow there, at different times, in a non-chronological order, Juan, Rosario and their son Gaspar. Around them gravitates a plethora of characters, directly or indirectly linked to the fate of Gaspar, the true central and enigmatic character of this story that is as fascinating as it is disconcerting.
We meet Juan at the beginning of the book, while he is crossing Argentina with his young son Gaspar after the suspicious death of Rosario, an anthropologist who has taken a close interest in the Guaraní culture, an indigenous tribe of South America. South. Juan is ready to do anything to spare his son, who seems to have inherited his gifts, the same fate as him, forever subjugated and chained to the Order. A medium in fragile health and with an immense body marked by deep scars, Juan was kidnapped at a very young age by this secret society which hunts down mediums all over the planet and worships Darkness, “a god with claws who hunts you down and find it,” said Mercedes, Rosario’s despicable mother. The latter is part of the powerful Reyes Bradford family, enriched by the exploitation of mate workers in Argentina, and one of the two founding families of the Cult of Shadow. They are ready to commit the worst atrocities in order to access immortality thanks to the teachings of Darkness, which manifests itself during bloody rituals through a medium, an oil spill that swallows everything – literally – in its path, cutting off arms , fingers, crunching with his mouth devouring the disciples sacrificed to satisfy his endless hunger.
Book of contrasts, divided into long chapters of sometimes unequal interest, Our part of the night immerses us in the darkness, on the base side of the heart of man where sadism, violence, the blind quest for power fester. The military dictatorship and the thousands of disappeared-ghosts left in its wake become a perfect alibi for the atrocities committed by the Order, a veritable microsociety that seems to evolve in a separate space-time. But through this immeasurable darkness, there is also the unconditional love that Juan has for his son, and the strong bond uniting Gaspar and his friends, who after discovering an “Other place”, a parallel reality strewn with bones and human remains, ready to swallow those who venture there, and perhaps the key to escaping the clutches of the Order, will never be the same again.
Gradually, the author weaves her web, returns to the past, leaps forward, patiently places the pieces of a dizzying puzzle where the secrets lurking in the shadows are never fully revealed in the light. Until the end, Our part of the night remains imbued with an unfathomable, abyssal mystery, giving shivers – and, perhaps, nightmares. A novel that, once closed, will continue to haunt you for a long time.
Our part of the night
Mariana Enriquez (translated from Spanish by Anne Plantagenet)
Alto
816 pages